Class 3: Memes

The meme. It's a bit of a pinch myself moment that in 2019 I am learning the academic classifications of a meme in a university course.

We are truly living in the strangest timeline, to think about my introduction to early memes wasting classtime on the original Smosh.com and I can haz cheezburger and then to the present day where the role of memes in undermining democratic elections is under serious scrutiny, the meme has had some serious character development.

But in retrospect this development shouldn't have been unexpected. Images have always had a greater ability to communicate to a mass audience than text or audio. The development of technology to decentralise the production and publication of images has made communication through visuals instantaneous and global.

The idea of technolgical determinism (Communicationtheory.org 2016) is worth considering in the conversation on memes as I feel it is absolutely a case of our communications shaping us and we are begining to see some unsavoury results. Memes and the way they have changed how we participate in online discourse have been blamed for shortening attention spans, dumbed down communication and an easily manipulated public. But is it simply the next logical step in the evolution of human communication? Memes can condense complex issues into a simple analogy using minimal text and an image, allowing for a faster means of sharing and processing information which in turn allows us to spend this saved time by processing more information. Put simply are memes just communication in it's most efficient form?

Memes have brought a really important and interesting angle to mass communications, particularly politics. The internet and Memes have shifted political discourse from a centralized model, where in the past information was provided the gatekeepers of the traditional media, towards a completely distributed model (Baran 1962). Opening political discourse the masses, which has limitless rammifications, good and terrifying. Especially when it comes down to efficiency; Why craft a logical and well researched speech to convince the public of your view when a condensed tweet or highly emotive meme can provide a greater impact on your audience?

Paul Baran's models of Distributed Communication networks (1962)

Technology tends to constantly outrun humanity's social framework and so as technology continues to change, our legislation and social expectations must adapt before they are rendered obsolete. For Memes and politics, will it be the way we use memes which needs to change or our own democratic process?

*visibly confused shrug*

-T

Meme by me

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Communicationtheory.org 2016. Technological determinism in Mass communication, Blog post. Communication Theory .org. Viewed Dec 14 2019. https://www.communicationtheory.org/technological-determinism/

Baran, Paul (1962). On distributed communication networks. The RAND corporation. pg 2640. Viewed Dec 14 2019. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2005/P2626.pdf